Headlines

Canada’s government formally told the global automaker Stellantis on Thursday that its transfer of the production of its Jeep Compass from a suburban Toronto plant to Illinois meant that the company had defaulted on contracts covering hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance, the New York Times reported. “Stellantis is on the hook,” Mélanie Joly, the Canadian industry minister, told a parliamentary committee after announcing that the government had served the company with a “notice of default” on Thursday.

Japan's economic revitalisation minister, Minoru Kiuchi, called on the central bank to closely communicate with the government in setting monetary policy on Friday, but did not voice opposition to a near-term interest rate hike, Reuters reported. Asked about growing prospects of an interest rate hike by the central bank in December, Kiuchi said that specific policy means was for the Bank of Japan to decide.

Swiss companies plan to relocate some of their operations and production abroad to deal with the impact of U.S. tariffs, according to a study by business association economiesuisse, Reuters reported. It surveyed more than 400 companies before and after Switzerland last month agreed a deal to reduce U.S. tariffs from 39% to 15%, with a quarter of the firms already having identified concrete steps they were taking. Nearly a third of those firms have decided to increase investments outside Switzerland and shift production and operations abroad, the survey said.

Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund has taken a rare public stand against a private equity firm's asset-shuffling plan, halting a proposed $800 million continuation fund involving Houston-based Energy & Minerals Group, AIInvest.com reported. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council filed a lawsuit to block the maneuver, which sought to move a key asset, Ascent Resources LLC, into a new vehicle according to reports. The legal challenge has drawn attention to governance concerns in private equity and highlighted growing investor wariness over opaque fund structures.

Canacol Energy Ltd., a Canadian natural gas exploration and production company with operations in Colombia, has formally requested that the Colombian Superintendencia de Sociedades (Superintendency of Corporations) recognize its ongoing Canadian insolvency proceedings, FinanceColombia.com reported. The objective of the petition is to suspend all execution processes and protective measures that could affect the continuity of its operations in Colombia. The request, submitted by KPMG INC.

Japanese household spending unexpectedly slumped at the fastest pace in nearly two years in October, government data showed Friday, raising concerns about the economic outlook as the Bank of Japan gears up for a rate hike as early as this month, Reuters reported. Consumer spending fell 3.0% in October from a year earlier, internal affairs ministry data showed, the first decrease in six months and falling at the steepest pace since January 2024. It was worse than the median market forecast for a 1.0% rise.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU), proposed ending individual countries' supervision of cryptocurrency companies and transferring the responsibility to the bloc's markets regulator as part of measures to "fully integrate" EU financial markets, CoinDesk.com reported. The commission wants to address the discrepancies that result from differing supervisory approaches among the 27 member states and transfer oversight to European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), it said in a Thursday statement.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in its recently released Regional Economic Prospects report, cites the uncertainty surrounding trade policies among the main reasons for revising global growth projections for 2025 from 3.5% to 3.2%, EuroNews reported. The US government has now threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and doubled levies on Chinese goods to 20%. While the direct effects of these policies have been widely discussed, the consequences for other countries remain unclear.

Scottish mountain bike brand, Deviate Cycles Limited, is insolvent, and the directors have been working with their professional advisers to try to find a buyer. Offers made were deemed insufficient, and so co-founder Ben Jones has stepped in to buy the company's assets, PinBike.com reported. Jones explained that Deviate Cycles, like too many bicycle brands, found itself in financial difficulty in the latter half of 2025 after major delays to stock availability. Stock that was supposed to arrive in the UK and be available for sale in summer did not arrive until late autumn.

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday it had made "significant progress" with Senegal toward a new loan programme while the Fund continued an internal investigation into how it failed to detect billions of dollars in unreported debt, Reuters reported. Senegal is trying to tame debts that the Fund said hit 132% of GDP at the end of 2024 after the current leadership uncovered billions in debts that were not reported by the previous administration.